Prince Edward County and the School Closings

With audio interview with Rita Odom-Moseley

With Good Reason public radio interview with Lacy Ward, Longwood University professor and Director of the Robert Russa Moton Museum. June 6, 2009.

"The Moton Oral History collection consists of interviews given by students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and other local citizens of Prince Edward County whose lives were impacted by the closing of the public schools in Prince Edward from 1951 to 1965."

The collection explores the history of the Prince Edward County school segregation issues of the 1950s and 1960s.

"This collection of 491 images dates primarily from the summer of 1963, when the demand for equality and for an end to racial segregation brought a series of protests to Farmville, Virginia, the county seat of Prince Edward County."

"Voices of Freedom was produced by the Virginia Civil Rights Movement Video Initiative, a non-profit organization incorporated in 2002 to produce videotaped oral histories of leaders of the Civil Rights movement in Virginia. While much has been written about the dramatic events which occurred in the deep South, the story of the Civil Rights movement in Virginia has largely gone untold. Voices of Freedom focuses on statewide activities from the 1950s through the early 1970s and includes stories about the "Jim Crow" segregation laws that prevailed up until the mid-1960s; stories about the struggles to change the laws and to change public attitudes; and advice from these civil rights veterans to future generations of Virginians/Americans."